Page 129 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Social Stratification

Notes which they own land, and usually exercise some degree of management and control over its
cultivation. Most of the members of this class come from the higher castes.
The second class referred to as kisan or working peasants has also a recognised property interest
in the land. They may be small owners, or tenants with varying degrees of security. By and large
(but not in every state) their legal and customary rights will be somewhat inferior to these of the
malik (proprietors) in the same village. The chief distinguishing feature however, is the amount of
land held. In the case of the working peasant the size of the holding is such that it supports only
a single family and then only if one or more members of the family actually perform the field
labour. In fact, the produce from the land owned by the kisan may not even provide the entire
income required by his family, but at least it provides a larger share than whatever funds he may
receive from other agricultural sources, such as doing labour on other people’s lands. Kisan as
defined here are those villagers who live primarily by their own toil on their own lands. They do
not employ labour, except briefly in the ploughing or harvest season, nor do they commonly
receive rent. They come from the middle level cultivating or artisan castes, most of these being
OBCs or backward castes.
The third agrarian class referred to as labourer or mazdur comprise those villagers who gain their
livelihood primarily from working on other people’s land. Families in this class may indeed have
tenancy rights in the soil, or even property rights, but the holdings are so small that the income
from cultivating them or from renting them out comes to less than the earnings from fieldwork.
Wages may be received in money or in kind. If the latter they may be fixed or may be in the form
of a crop share. In practice the lower ranks of croppers and tenants at will are almost
indistinguishable from mazdur, they will tentatively be included in this category. Most of the
members of this class come from the traditionally landless, deprived, lowly untouchable castes or
scheduled castes and backward castes.
As Thorner rightly points out, the maintenance of this hierarchial structure of interests in the land
has required that quite a substantial proportion of the produce be reserved for persons who
perform no agricultural labour. What was left to the actual cultivator, after the claims of the
various superior might holders were satisfied, might still be subject to collection as unpaid debt by
the moneylender. Thus, the power structure in the agrarian classes is largely based on exploitation
and deprivation.
In his landmark work D.N. Dhanagre (1983) says that although Thorner’s categories and sub-
categories are nearer the realities of the Indian agrarian social structure there is still a need to
readjust or regroup these categories into a broader and more comprehensive model and redesignate
them by commonly used concepts and criteria in the study of peasant societies. Such a model can
be drawn from the works of Lenin and Marx, especially those relating to analyses of agrarian
projected during the freedom struggle or even there after and the actual measures introduced for
land reforms. Consequently, socialist transformation in the class structure of the villages has not
taken place.
(i) This lag could partly be explained by the class character of the Indian political and
administrative elite who are resistant to the needed radical reforms.
(ii) The existing land reforms have initiated a process by which the security of tenure and
economic prosperity of the rich peasantry has increased, but the condition of the small
peasants both in respect of economic level and tenurial stability has deteriorated.
(iii) The feudalistic and customary type of tenancy has declined and it has been replaced by a
capitalistic form of lease labour or wage labour agrarian system.
(iv) A new class of rich middle stratum of peasantry system has come into being, and not all of
these are from among the ex-zamindars.
(v) The class inequalities, between the top and the bottom levels of the classes, have increased
rather than decreased.

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